I happened to catch Women’s Hour last week and found Libby Purves talking about a book she has published with her journalist husband Paul Heiney.
It’s called The Silence at the Song’s End and it is a collection of the poems, essays and diaries of their son Nick Heiney.
Nick committed suicide last June aged just 23 after a battle with a serious mental illness.
Libby spoke with great clarity about how the pleasure they took in finding their son’s extensive writings and the decision to publish.
She also explained why they decided to go down the ‘vanity’ publishing route of doing it by themselves instead of going to one of the big publishing houses.
Libby knew that if she did that, inevitably, the book would be about a famous mother and her slightly less famous husband’s journey of grief. They wanted a showcase for her talented son’s thoughts.
Among them were:
What is important is to remember that it is not the way in which we record our existence, but that we do record it. In the air, and everywhere around, we must remember how the streets ring out for every soul that thought and felt and passed through them in weakness and in strength.